Harvest for Kids 2014

The Belize Camping Experience is a Belize City based N.G.O. that was established back in 2008 and has been sponsoring summer camps across the city. While the youth organization has been thriving on donations from the private sector, today majority of its operating funds are generated from its own initiative, Harvest for Kids. Founded in 2011, the project enjoys the participation of many farmers who work along with the organization and a large number of Belize City kids to plant and harvest a crop. The first project was the cultivation of corn in the Cayo district and this year, the initiative has shifted to the cultivation of rice. Farmers from Orange Walk’s Circle ‘R’ Rice are partnering with the organization and this past weekend, Director of the Belize Camping Experience, Alexander Perez, and fifteen kids went up north to start in the process. Perez spoke to News Five today about the new initiatives.

Alexander Perez

Alexander Perez, Director, Belize Camping Experience

“We are finishing working with the school at the end of this year and we are also getting ready for summer camps which are heading in two months. One of the good news is that we had two Belizean farmers generously give us twenty acres of land to plant rice. They give us the land and literally they’re giving us the profits of their whole farm. What we are going to do this year is that we are going to introduce to our kids a new harvest and that’s rice. So we planted rice and we took kids out in the field so that they can see how you plant and how you irrigate the rice and interesting for me is that it is so fascinating the way how they planted rice. I’ve never seen how they planted rice and they planted rice with a airplane and they fertilize the whole field with an airplane which took about two hours. So we are looking forward to a harvest; it is going to come very school. But at the same time, what we are doing too is the partnership between Circle ‘R’ and Harvest for Kids. By now, everyone should know, that it is already in the supermarkets where everyone has the opportunity to support Harvest for Kids. By you buying the Circle ‘R’ Rice, a percentage of the rice goes towards the kids program; however, the price of Circle ‘R’ Rice does not change…it remains the same. They are just taking a percentage and giving it to kids and I think it is a fantastic idea.  We have two months of summer camps which is very intense, but the rest of the year, where Belize Camping Experience shines is working with the schools—going into the school, doing the chapel programs, making sure that we can provide mentoring for the children and bringing good message. Like right now, the message is “Stick with It—if you start something, you finish it.”

Perez says that as many as sixty Belize City children will participate in the harvesting of the rice which is set for the twenty-first of June.